Marilyn Armstrong – Chaos is king and magic is loose in the world.

Primary Menu

Tag Cell Phones

As we were packing up to come home — really, I wasn’t packing so much as stuffing my belongings into a duffel — I was bummed. At having to come home to reality.

Reality is full of telephone calls. Details. Bills. Thanksgiving is next week, Christmas just a month after. Holidays and gifts mean money. Which is always a problem and inevitably ups my anxiety levels to absurd heights.

As if the holidays aren’t enough, it’s also “open enrollment” for medical stuff. I need to take a hard look at Garry’s drug plan. And I need to be sure I’m in the best Medicare plan I can afford. I think the Blue Cross PPO I’ve got is as good as is available, especially considering its modest price.

Nonetheless, I need to check. If I find out I missed the boat, I’ll have a year of kicking myself before I can fix it.

Then there is The Cell Phone. By now, everyone knows how I feel about cell phones. I no longer have one of my own, having had it turned off. Garry and I share one. Mostly, it’s his, but sometimes I use it too.

Which is fine, except it’s an iPhone 4 and more than 2 years old. It didn’t have good audio when it was brand new. Time has not improved either the phone or Garry’s hearing.

I’m looking at Amazon’s Fire phone now that they’ve dropped the price. Both Garry and I have Kindle Fire tablets and like them. We’re happy in the Amazon universe, so it might be a good fit for us … if AT&T won’t flatten us with fees and charges.

Logically, it should be no big deal, but the way taxes are structured, it will be. I don’t understand people who actually want a new phone every year. I hate the whole process, the expense, learning the new equipment.

What a pain in the butt! Moreover, just to make it worse, Massachusetts requires we pay taxes on the full price of the phone no matter what the actual price. Which right now is 99 cents with a 2-year contract.

Garry’s existing contract with AT&T expires on December 20th, so I have to call. Find out what all of this will really cost. It’ll be 99 cents for the phone, plus a $40 “upgrade fee,” plus taxes. And who knows if the plan we have will be valid with a new phone.

By the time all is said and done, it’ll cost us hundreds of dollars … and Christmas is just around the corner. It makes me want to scream.

Like this:

I got an email from AT&T. It was alarming. I was overdue on my bill! They were going to report me to collection agencies, send it to all those companies that decide whether or not you deserve to have a credit card or a mortgage.

I was surprised because I paid the bill. On time. Online. I know I did.

So, after resetting my password — it doesn’t matter how many times I set my password … the next time I go to AT&T’s website, I will have to do it again — I looked at my bill. Somehow, I had underpaid the bill by a penny. One cent. $00.01

In retribution for my oversight, AT&T is going to sic the collection agency on me. I deserve to pay big for this lapse in fiscal responsibility.Though I actually think it was their error, not mine, but let’s not quibble.

Paying the bill!

There are many battles to fight in life. One must pick amongst them lest one be overwhelmed. This giant corporation is going to destroy my credit for want of a penny. This is what happens when computers run the world and no people monitor what they are doing. I’m sure this was all automatically generated. I am equally certain if I’d called them, they would have cancelled the bill. AT&T has pretty good customer service. But that would take even more time and effort. I fondly believe my time, even retired, is worth more than a penny.

So I paid the bill. I wasn’t actually sure my bank would let me pay a one cent bill, but they did.

One cent. Just one cent. Mind boggling.

Share this:

Like this:

Progress. I love progress and am strongly in favor of it, especially when we are progressing backwards. Kind of like technological time travel as gradually, by adding more and better high-tech devices, stuff that used to be simple and problem-free becomes much more complicated, difficult and expensive. The techno-version of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Let us travel together back in time to the halcyon days of yore. Not so long ago … the 1970s and 1980s. Even the 1990s.

Remember? We could make telephone calls without worrying whether or not the person on the other end could hear us. Without wondering if we would be able to understand them. That was so cool, wasn’t it? You didn’t have to shout into the phone, wasting half the call yelling “Hello? Are you there? Can you hear me? You’re breaking up. Can you hear me? Hello?”

You could have an entire conversation, from the beginning to end without getting disconnected, losing the signal, running out of battery. Getting dumped out by your carrier. Nobody said “What” even once! Unimaginable, isn’t it? I grew up and in my entire childhood, I do not remember ever having to ask “Can you hear me?” We could always hear. Sometimes, a long distance call had an echo, but you called the operator and they put the call through, no charge. No problem.

The story is set in 1904 when the World’s Fair was coming to St. Louis and telephones in private homes were still the hot new technology. A long distance call from a far away city was a very big deal. Early in the story, the oldest sister Rose gets a long-distance call from New York.

The phone rings.

* * *

Rose Smith: Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?

Warren Sheffield: Yes, I can hear you. (Pause)

Rose Smith: What did you say, Warren?

Warren Sheffield: Nothing. I was waiting for you to talk

Rose Smith: Oh. Well, did you want to discuss anything in particular?

Warren Sheffield: What?

Rose Smith: I said, was there anything special you wanted to ask me

Warren Sheffield: I can’t hear you, Rose

Rose Smith: That’s funny. I can hear you plainly

Warren Sheffield: Isn’t this great? Here I am in New York and there you are in St. Louis and it’s just like you’re in the next room.

Like this:

It’s a moment of pure joy, a moment of revelation. Caught in the camera’s lens, the caterpillar emerges from the chrysalis.

A moment comes when suddenly, you know you’ve changed. No more the kid, you’ve moved up a rung on the ladder to that perfect place, a real teenager. Finally, you’re old enough to go out and do stuff with your friends.

You can go all kinds of places, like the mall and the movies. You can start to think about going on a date … well … maybe not yet, but soon. Meanwhile, you can wear makeup, put blue and pink stripes in your hair.

You’re young enough to be silly, old enough to have privileges. You’ve got friends, a cell phone, and soon you can learn to drive. You’re perfect. The universe is in balance. Today you are 15 years old … and the world belongs to you.

Share this:

Like this:

My granddaughter and many of her friends are having big problems in high school. Their problems are identical to those of my generation but this generation is even more clueless than we were. They have no idea how to cope. They are like those monkeys raised with wire mothers, at a loss to relate to other monkeys.

They don’t know the difference between a real friend and a casual acquaintance. The glib labeling from social media is, for them, the real deal … until they discover it’s not.

Becoming a misfit in high school is easy. If you are different, you are going to have social problems. How large these problems loom is a function of the vulnerability of the individual.

In the “good old days” when I was growing up, rumors and lies spread no faster than however long it took to pass the word from person to person. Today, with the click of a mouse on a Facebook page or mobile phone, the same meanness, backbiting and gossip that has always been with us can be distributed instantly to hundreds, thousands, even millions of people. It’s the same stuff, but it gets around faster.

Schools can’t deal with the problem. It’s too amorphous. They can’t control the Internet, text messages, and social media sites. It’s so easy to pick on someone. It doesn’t even have to be intentional.

A moment of pique, thoughtlessness, a casual reference, ordinary gossip can do an enormous amount of damage to a fragile adolescent ego. The electronic world is as real to them … maybe even more real … than traditional relationships. I’m not sure they understand there is a difference.

I’ve watched the dynamics of this first generation of young people for whom cell phones and computers are as ordinary as electricity was for us. I’ve watched them sit together in groups preferring to text each other rather than talk. I’ve wondered how in the world they would ever learn how to have a real relationship, to make the kind of friends that last a lifetime.

The answer is that they haven’t learned. They are lost.

They are starting to pay the price of hiding behind electronic communication. They have used it as a substitute for face time, conversation, of really being with other people.

Shy kids have had no motivation to get over it. They can’t handle even the simplest conversation. They don’t get it that people can be two-faced, dishonest, and just mean and that it isn’t personal. People are what they are. We older people could help if they let us, but we’re fossils, stupid old people suggesting they talk to each other, spend time together, that you can’t become “best friends for life” by exchanging emails.

They’ve relied on words alone, out of context of the rest of the package: facial expression and body language. They have never learned to “read” people. They can’t see when someone is lying.

Growing up is hard. Being a teenager is rough. It was as true 50 years ago as today, but we never had the choice of hiding behind a computer.

A lot of young people have had only minimal contact with other kids. There are a lot of forces at work, not only the hyper-availability of technology but also the fearfulness parents, the limited availability of free time, the overly structured lives kids have. They can’t just hang out. They aren’t encouraged to do stuff independently.

If my generation suffered from unwillingness to discipline our kids, this generation of parents not only doesn’t discipline kids, they smother and over-protect them from life itself. They label everything as bullying. They do not encourage their offspring to face problems and assure them they can handle it, that you don’t get emotional strength by avoiding life. Instead they buy into the endless psychobabble and make their kids feel even more helpless.

I’m not surprised at the problems. Despite my son and daughter-in-law’s contention that kids are meaner than they were, I don’t agree. Kid, people, are no different than they ever were. The difference is that parents are afraid to let their kids work out their problems. They don’t let them grow up. Sometimes, I think they don’t really want them to grow up, as if they want them to stay permanently dependent and childish. They have no idea how much they will regret it.

It’s natural to want to protect your children from hurt, but you shouldn’t protect them from life.

Life hurts. Life is also wonderful, rich, rewarding, exciting. But never pain-free.

There’s no turning back from technology. Nor would most of us want to dump our computers and cell phones. There does need to be a better balance. Technology won’t produce relationships. Exchanging words is not bonding. Sending texts and emails can’t establish closeness.

It’s a tall order convincing teenagers that emotional pain is part of growing up. Nothing but experience will help toughen them up so they can function in the world.

No one gets a pass from pain. Money won’t buy it. Private schools won’t keep life away. There’s only one way to become a survivor — experience. These kids need to get out and live. Put the cell phones away and talk to each other. Get involved. Let life happen to them, be swept away by events and emotions. Learn that feelings are manageable … with practice.

Share this:

Like this:

It was a beautiful morning and if I hadn’t had a dentist appointment, it would have been a great day for a photo shoot. I didn’t want to go to the dentist anyhow and if it weren’t for all those reminders from the office on how overdue I am for a check up, I would have happily canceled and wiled the bight hours away in the woods and by the streams.

A tiny waterfall behind the leaves.

As it was, I had the presence of mind to toss the little Canon point and shoot into my rucksack. That’s why I bought it, so I wouldn’t be reduced to trying to use my cell phone. Do not tell me what great pictures I can get with my phone. I don’t care. My phone is not a camera. I have issues with taking pictures using non-camera-shaped objects.

A red barn in Mendon.

I found a long-lost waterfall, waving grasses, a great old red barn. A white farmhouse with a tilted white well. Some color on trees and vines. It’s just the beginning, but I’m hoping this will be a good one. A long autumn, a bright autumn. The last good time before winter closes in again.